Ghosts with just voices
by acciograce
Summary: "It hurts, to have to tell him the truth. To have to confirm how little I was there for him when he would have readily given us his life for me. But I tell him because he deserves to know." There are some questions about Peeta's life before the hijacking that hurt to answer. And there are some that Katniss can't answer at all.
1. Check

The fall air is cold on my lungs. Crisp leaves crumble underneath my feet as I make my way back home. My game bag is full, slung over my shoulder. Greasy Sae will have options for dinner tonight. We will eat well.

I'm still getting used to this "we." Sae and Evie, her granddaughter. Buttercup, waiting for scraps. Haymitch, if he remembers to stumble in. And Peeta, always Peeta, since the primrose bush he planted in my yard.

Dr. Aurelius tells me, in our mandated weekly phone calls, that a routine – brushing my teeth, hunting, helping Sae cook and serve dinner, eating at least once a day, working on the memory book with Peeta and Haymitch – is therapeutic.

"Normalcy is healthy," he tells me.

So I create checkmarks in my mind to help me remember and keep me on track. Get out of bed – check. Brush my teeth – check. Find food for dinner – check. After weeks of this mental litany, I understand why he suggested it – I begrudgingly have to admit this list helps me feel sane.

Though I'm still not convinced I am. Last month, there were two days when I didn't get out of bed. The nightmare I couldn't shake had been of Finnick and Prim fishing for baby bones in a pond of blood.

And last week, I sobbed for close to an hour after I pulled a squirrel from a snare. I couldn't bear to bring it back to Victor's Village with me. And I couldn't find the words to explain to Peeta why my voice was raw and my eyes were puffy when I walked through the door empty-handed. So I sat in the corner of my bedroom and he didn't ask me again when he came to bring that night's dinner – roasted squash from the garden.

"Eat it while it's still warm," he said gently.

I did as he asked – check.

There's one I haven't told Dr. Aurelius about. Haymitch and Sae have to know by now, but they never bring it up. It's listening to Peeta downstairs in my kitchen at night, preparing the dough for the next day's bread. It's waiting to fall asleep until he climbs into bed. His arm around me, his steady breathing in my ear – check.

This is life now – checkmarks and routine. Waking up and going to bed and everything in between. Just a few months ago I had only myself and Buttercup and a chair. Now we have dinner and the book and I have the "we."

"Gratitude is important," Dr. Aurelius says. "I know it seems impossible to be grateful for anything. But you have to try."

Check.

I'm not surprised to see Peeta's silhouette through my living room window as I climb the stairs to my home. He's usually here in the afternoon, making bread in the kitchen or drawing pictures of trees with Evie while Sae cooks. He needs the routine as much as I do.

I announce my presence when I close the door behind me, stopping in the foyer to hang my coat and scarf. When I walk into the living room, I see a fire roaring to life in the hearth and our memory book open but untouched on the couch. Peeta stands at the window, silent, rigid, and I feel an uneasiness creeping into my stomach.

"Hey, Peeta."

He looks over at me, blue eyes traveling quickly over me. "Hey, Katniss." As though he didn't realize I was there until that moment.

"Good haul," I say, lifting up my game bag, mostly to fill the uncomfortable quiet that has settled between us.

"That's great," his tone is even and he smiles, but I can tell his mind is somewhere else. In the arena? In the Capitol labs? In the tunnels with mutts and death? His gaze falls back, outside the window and beyond, and it's as if I'm not there again.

Today is a bad day for Peeta.

This summer, he admitted to me one morning over breakfast that he could hear me waking from my nightmares at night. My windows were open, his windows were open, and my screams were loud.

"I still have them too," he said. Of course he did. I heard him sometimes, too. "I wanted to see if you were okay. But…" He never finishes his sentence.

That night, I left my front door unlocked. And when I woke from a dream of watching Rue catch an exploding parachute, he was next to me. His hand on my face, guiding my eyes to his – to bring me back. "It's not real," he whispered.

It was the fact that he knew enough of reality to tell me so that eventually helped me sleep again that night.

Right now, I want to help him the way he helps me. To do or say something that sets his mind at ease. To keep his mind away from whatever he's seeing in that unfathomable distance.

But I don't know what he it's hard for him to find the words to. More often than not, I have to piece together what the Capitol fed him through his questions.

"You asked me to run away from District 12 with you."

"You let your prep team paint fire in your eyes."

"The last night before the Quell – you looked at the cameras on the ceiling when I held you. That was for them, too."

"You didn't think of me in the Games until you knew saving me would help you."

Real or not real?

The best of me, the worst of me… I don't blame him for having a hard time sorting it all out.

It hurts, to have to tell him the truth. To have to confirm how little I was there for him when he would have readily given us his life for me.

But I tell him because he deserves to know.

I watch Peeta stare into space for a moment – waiting to see if he wants my help, if there are any questions that will require painful answers.

He doesn't speak until I've crossed the room, on my way to put dinner in the kitchen.

"Katniss."

I turn to see him looking at me – eyes tentative as they watch me, afraid to ask. And while he's asked me to confirm or deny some terrible things – my intent to murder him, illicit moments with Gale filmed to make Peeta squirm, my complicity with the destruction of District 12 – I am woefully unprepared to handle the question that falls from his lips.

"We had sex. Real or not real?"

- end of part 1 -


	2. Ashes

Not real.

It's two words I've spoken to him hundreds of times. So why is it now – with this question – that I can't bring myself to say them?

I'm frozen in place, standing only a few feet from him. Can I swallow? My throat is suddenly so dry that I'm not sure if I can. He's looking at me – intently, the ghost of Snow's lies dancing behind his eyes. Months ago, I would have been afraid.

But I know now that what I see isn't loathing or danger. It's the part of him that's broken.

And behind the confusion in those rich, blue eyes there's something else. Hope? Maybe not hope because I think he's already figured out the answer. Disappointment, maybe. Apprehension.

I don't know how long we stand there with one another, neither able to move or speak. Minutes, maybe. But I hear movement in the kitchen - cupboards banging, water running, and I know this isn't the place for us to address this.

So I give him the softest smile I can muster. "I'm going to give this to Sae. Do you want to talk in my room?"

It's one of the unspoken rules between us. Since he started sleeping in my bed at night, my room is our safe space. When it gets to be too much – the nightmares, the flashbacks, the grief – we can hide here. No questions. No explanations needed.

Except now.

He stands, arms folded against his strong chest, when I walk into the room. For a moment, I almost feel like he's angry at me – like he's figured it out and he's felt the familiar sting of betrayal. Yet another thing I didn't give him. But the expression on his face is gentle and his hands are not balled in fists, but cupping his elbows protectively. I know this isn't about anger – it's about understanding.

Even though his question still lingers between us, he speaks first.

"I'm sorry, Katniss." His voice is soft. "I don't want to have to ask."

I can't describe the feeling that courses through me for him in this moment. Empathy, warmth, pain, regret. Some mixture of all of these. Since the Capitol, I've spent so long trying to bury my most painful memories inside me and here he is, desperate to have memories he can trust.

"Don't apologize," I say, and it comes out stern – not at all how I wanted it to. "You don't have to." Gentler. I know I'm going to deliver a blow. I move closer to him, as if my proximity can soften it somehow.

"It's just fuzzy." He shakes his head. "I don't think we did. But I can't – I don't know." His eyes meet mine, searching. "There's a few pictures in my mind I can't sort out. You and me on the train, and on the roof at the training center… on the beach in the arena."

Heat creeps into my cheeks at the mention of that last moment. I remember how it felt to be with him then. The hunger – desire – that built in me, how easily we moved together, the way I hadn't wanted to stop kissing him, the way I didn't care who saw. I know he felt it, too.

"But we wouldn't have, right? Not in front of all of those people. It's not real."

"We wouldn't have. We didn't." My voice is barely a whisper. Not real.

The breath he exhales is shaky and he can't look at me but I see some of the tension melt from his face. He sits on the edge of my bed, then – as though exhausted by the effort it took to work it out.

"I didn't think so." He rests his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.

I find myself sitting next to him without thinking. "You're getting better at this." It's all I can think of to say. "At knowing."

He sighs in response. "I'm not." And he looks at me. "I don't even know, Katniss…" His brow is furrowed. Like he can't figure out to say what he needs to. Peeta, the boy who could paint pictures with his words, speechless. My hand travels to his back, lightly moving up and down – the only comfort I can give him.

"It's okay."

"I called Delly this morning," his voice is low. "In District 4. She says hi, by the way."

I don't know where this is going, so I wait patiently for him to gather his words.

"We were never the best of friends, but we knew the same people. I thought maybe she would know."

"Know what?" I'm careful with my words – not wanting to push him, wanting him to stay with me.

"What I did." He takes a deep shuddering breath. "Dr. Aurelius said that a side effect of the hijacking is that there are pieces of my memory that are just gone. Overwritten, to make room for all Snow's false pictures." He runs one hand through his hair. "I still remember most things but… right after the Games, it's like someone kept turning the lights off and on. I remember moving into the Victor's Village. How quiet the house was. But then it's just… bits and pieces. Until the Victory Tour."

It's hard for me to swallow again and I don't know why.

"I remember how I felt. So completely lonely. And I'd never known… you grow up with a house full of brothers, and friends and… then it was just me in that big old house. And you weren't there. You were with Prim and your mom. With Haymitch sometimes. With him."

"I went into town one day to get some things I needed. Maren Apsley was there in the bakery. She was very… friendly when she saw me."

I remember Maren, a merchant girl with a beautiful smile and a body that even Gale had watched when she walked down the hall at school. I remember she was very friendly with a lot of the merchant boys.

"She offered to help me carry what I bought back home. Said I shouldn't have to do it alone." His voice is lowering. "I know we walked back to my house. I remember sitting on my couch. I offered her a cookie and she said she wasn't hungry and…"

He shook his head, eyes down, studying the palms of his hands. "She knew we weren't really together, you and I. I think everyone in District 12 knew. I think she would have kissed me like that even if we were together."

Peeta hasn't met my eyes since he started telling me about Maren. And while I can't deny the strange sense of jealousy I feel, I also can't hold anything he's saying against him. Not after everything he forgave me for.

"It's okay," I tell him evenly. "You don't have to explain."

"I can't explain," he says, his voice rough. "I don't know what happened after that. I don't know if we… it's just gone. I asked Delly if Maren had ever said anything about us. The weather was gorgeous that day – sunny and warm. A lot of people were out. Friends from school… they saw Maren walking back to Victor's Village with me. There was gossip. But she said Maren told her 'a lady never reveals her secrets.'"

"And you…" I blush, feeling silly and schoolgirlish for doing so. "And you hadn't? Before?"

The shake of his head is almost imperceptible. "I was waiting."

For the Seam girl with the braid and the squirrels. For me.

And I feel sick for him – for the reality of another thing that the Capitol stole from him. Did they take the memory from him because he had slept with the merchant girl – because they saw it as something important to him and they wanted to deprive him? Or did they take it because he hadn't done anything worth remembering and they wanted to torment him into thinking that he had?

"Do… do you feel like you did?"

"I think I could have. I was so lonely, Katniss." His voice is impossibly small. He still won't look at me. "I meant it when I said I don't blame you. For what you did in the Games. You saved both our lives. But when we got back – I was angry. I was hurt. I'd spent my whole life watching you, waiting for you to notice me… wanting you." I see a blush creep up his neck and I feel the heat of his implication, too. "For just a little while, I believed it could happen. And then just like that it was gone." He shakes his head. "I don't blame you. But it hurt. And I needed something that would make it not hurt."

Haymitch drank. I hunted. It only made sense that Peeta would have sought his escape from the horrors of our lives through love. Love I'd shown I couldn't give him.

I get it. The loneliness. I remember the way I kissed Gale in District 2 – not out of desire but desperation to feel something good and forget the pain.

"I'm sorry."

I look at him, alarmed. What could he possibly be sorry for? "Don't apologize. If you did, or you didn't… you didn't do anything wrong."

His eyes find mine now, finally. They're wet. Instinct kicks in and I take his hands in mine.

"I'm sorry." For hurting him and leaving him to deal with it alone. For everything that happened since. For the fact that the only person who could ever confirm what happened that day is nothing more than ashes on the ground now.

"I knew we didn't." He runs his thumb over my knuckle, an intimate gesture that somehow feels normal between us now. "You and me. But if we had, at least I remembered."

My mind returns to that night during the Quell. The way his hands felt as they floated over my body. The way his tongue tangled with mine.

He was right. We wouldn't have made love for all of Panem to see. But if we'd been like that with no gamemakers, no Capitol citizens foaming at the mouth to see what happened next, I would have stripped him bare and given him the love he'd craved for so long. Because I needed it, too.

"I wanted to." I tell him, my voice hoarse. "In the arena, on the beach. You remember that night, right?"

"I remember."

"I wanted to." I don't know what else to say. This time, it's my eyes searching his for a response – a sign that I've gone too far, said too much, made him uncomfortable.

He releases my hands from his, one moving to touch my chin. I don't know if he kisses me or I kiss him but our lips are together. It's gentle and sweet and quiet. It's an apology and a promise.

The kiss is short but we stay sitting on the bed, eyes closed, heads together, breathing in one another. We sit like this until we hear the front door open and Haymitch downstairs, grumbling about the geese and the cold.

Sae calls up to tell us it's time for dinner.

Peeta holds my hand as we walk down the stairs.

Dr. Aurelius says I need to take it a day at a time - good and bad. Find the routine and stay with it. He says I need to let people in.

Check.

- end part 2 -


End file.
